


a different pack

by overloading



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Age Difference, Character Study, Cyborg Anatomy, M/M, Mild Daddy Kink, Porn with Feelings, post MGS4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:55:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26559307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/overloading/pseuds/overloading
Summary: “David.” His voice is low — Jack's eyes meet his, sharp but full, a knife eager to plunge into a body. Pry it open, crawl inside, hold a bare heart in your hands. “Look at me.”
Relationships: Raiden/Solid Snake
Comments: 9
Kudos: 46





	a different pack

The moonlight washes over them through the slits of the blinds.

Snake’s heartbeat is sluggish, like a steady slow crawl through the rain. Raiden listens to it intently, feeling his own relax in turn, fingers moving to gingerly curl in between his.

Reluctantly, he pulls away again. Laying his head here — in his nakedness, synthetic body or not — was more than he could ask for. Had this been someone else, he would have left. Would have panicked, would have run away.

When Snake opens his eyes, Raiden’s narrow. 

“...Mornin’.”

Waking up with pressure on his chest surprises him, and initially, Snake chalks the bruises and soreness up to the previous night. In the morning hours where it's still dark, and likely will be for another hour or two, his eyesight has to adjust. It doesn't take long for him to pick out the outline of Raiden: he's white as a pearl and sticks out like a sore thumb against the dark sheets. Snake grunts and pulls himself up onto his shoulders, looking down at the other man with a raised brow.

Raiden's no different from a cat, all mischievous glinting in his narrow gaze and cheek to Snake's chest. He takes a moment to thread his calloused fingers through his hair, softer than you would imagine a man like him keeping it. Well, he always was a beauty, even if there are ridges that run through his skin, marking him as if he were a doll to break the immersion.

“Didn't think you'd stick around.” He says, gravely and low. Satisfied with that alone, Snake twists his body, reaching over to the nightstand for a pack of smokes. Old habits die hard. “Good night?”

Raiden hisses out a “tch,” through his teeth; the layer that’s left, anyways — but he makes no effort to move, instead letting his jaw nuzzle against Snake’s skin, the affection in the gesture nearly impossible to miss. 

“One word for it, yeah.” If he’s expecting him to fluster, he’ll be proven wrong. That first remark goes unanswered for now. Raiden doesn’t quite have the words, let alone the reason, prepared for that line of conversation just yet.

So he takes to watching him. Blinking, as though he were 5 years younger, still the youthful “rookie” Snake knew. And then he grimaces, muffling a laugh as he throws his head down a little. 

“Give me a light too.” The pad of his finger absent mindedly traces a circle against one of his hips. “It’s a miracle you’re still in one piece after that.”

“ _Great_ night, then.” Snake answers for him. He’ll take it.

Cigarette in his mouth, Snake looks over to Raiden with a placid expression, one that’s just barely readable as tired. With a nod, he offers Raiden a smoke as well…and once it's taken, lights his own up first. The edge burns red-orange and nicotine drenches his senses. When he speaks, smoke rolls out of his mouth in long plumes. 

“If you say so.” Raiden’s eyeroll is audible. It was a good night, but not for the reasons he realizes; or maybe he does. He’s always been astute, and there’s always been this binding and unspoken understanding between them. The smoke hits him face first — he breathes it in, letting it fill his artificial lungs to the brim, feeling his wiring stir slightly.

“Yeah?” Snake huffs out. “Lucky I left you in one piece.” He leans forward so their faces are almost touching. Against the slanted light of the moon creeping through his shitty blinds, Snake’s smirk peeks through the darkness like a wisp. If Raiden wants his cigarette lit, he'll have to come get it. “Pretty boy.”

Raiden cants his head, lips thinning into a line. Heartwarmingly nostalgic or downright insufferable, he couldn’t decide.

In the meantime, Snake allows Raiden free roam of his body, raising one leg at the knee as he leans into him. Doesn't return the touch, but does offer intimacy by not cutting it off. Raiden wedges his own cigarette between his teeth. An amused puff of air slips through their crevices before he inclines his head; he lets their foreheads graze against one another as the end of his cigarette burns red hot. The nicotine doesn’t do much for him, not the way it used to, but it washes over him anyways. A phantom sensation, maybe, some attempt at reliving the past. He pulls his head back and rests his cheek in the palm of his hand. 

“Right. Like you could keep up with me.” Said with a vague scoff. Their bodies were polarizing, one on its last leg, crumbling like dust, the other forged from iron and steel and all things immortal. They had the same thing in common though: they weren’t theirs anymore. They’d been ripped away from them too early, too soon, but led them here no less. Raiden prods at Snake’s hip before letting his palm slide down his thigh, giving him a caress. 

“I only let you go ‘cause you got tired.”

Now that earns him a snort. Raiden’s vision is uncannily precise enough to catch the smile in Snake’s eyes. “Talkative…” _"...for someone who got their back blown out,"_ goes unsaid but is heavily implied. Snake takes a few hits off his cigarette, not responding for the moment and it lingers there, in the air, thick as the scent of tobacco from the two of them.

He likes it that way: quiet and peaceful, a moment with nothing to offer aside from the strange coolness of Raiden's touch. It isn't a human body, but it's his— Snake does not bat his hand away. 

“This isn't a game, Raiden. You can't bait me into another round.”

Spoken simply, easily, like tea from a tilted pot. Snake retrieves the ashtray in short form, places it between them. Leaves it there as if to implore Raiden not to ruin the sheets. Then he's quiet again, even if Raiden gives him a witty retort. It's a tease that they both know has little weight, Snake imagines. He’d rather opt to leisurely watch the way Raiden's gaze flits about, how his jaw moves, the little cracks in his movements that read unnatural, and he thinks that there isn't much difference between the two of them in the end.

And yet they still found their way here, mangled together in some web of flesh and wires — because in spite of their designs, they believed the other had been created for something beyond death and destruction and corruption. Something great: as grand and pure as love, even. Desperately, they breathed life into each other as two beings who would only be real in name and name alone.

At the very least, they were real in this moment.

So Snake tucks a tuft of ash blonde hair behind his ear, exhaustion still apparent in his features. The movement is ghost-like, quick and caring. Sooner than later, that same hand comes to rest on Raiden's shoulder. 

“You're like a cat.”

There’s a mechanical grind of the teeth, jaw clicking lightly as the cigarette roils a little. At the brush of his hair, Raiden’s features soften and ease into something uncharacteristically benign; his touch alone nearly sends a shudder through him. It’s stabilizing. And unstabilizing. Grounding but warm, reminiscent of an ember. 

“You sure?” The cadence to Raiden’s voice is unmistakable. It’s teasing in what it is. Slowly, his hand is already maneuvering towards Snake’s inner thigh, the pads of his fingers grazing against his aged skin and flesh. Raiden shifts his head closer — until his chin is nestled near the crook of Snake’s neck. 

“First time I’ve been told that.” And in the momentary silence, a ring of smoke swells around his face. He’s still massaging his inner thigh all the while, of course; hasn’t stopped for a second. 

“You’re more of a dog guy, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.” He admits without hesitance, looking askance to gauge Raiden's reaction. Snake doesn't remove himself from the other man, the cool metal and pressure he applies to him growing warm from Snake's body heat. Guess he's just used to the feeling of it. He’d liken Raiden to a purring kitten at this rate. Regardless, Snake moves the ashtray to grant him that space, rolling the cigarette in his mouth with ease. The scent of tobacco sticks to everything, but it's been a while since he sat in bed with someone and talked over a cigarette, he realizes.

It doesn't shock him that no one has told him he's like a cat before, either— Snake doesn't know how intimate he's been with other people, and looking at him like this, there isn’t much need to question why or how. They had taken everything from him, and there's only so much he can try to give him back. For now, he’ll give him the freedom that comes with silence.

And then—“I know you're dying to ask, so I'll just answer. Fifty. I had fifty huskies.”

“...fifty?” Raiden’s eyes widen all doe-eyed, a flash of surprise that quickly narrows into incredulous amusement. “What'd you need fifty for? And how'd you keep up with them, anyways? Tch.” Cue a steady shake of the head before he pats at his thigh. “Never realized you were so good with _animals_ , Snow White.”

Raiden does indeed take the bait as he adjusts his weight against Snake, closing in on him with a quickly growing interest; eventually, the cigarette lolls right out of the corner of his mouth and onto the tray. It's intentional, of course, because this way he can press his lips (one half forged from flesh, the other being nothing more than a remnant of metal) to his neckline. This sort of gesture — it doesn't come naturally. Never did. Being present and material, rather than a ghost by now, was unfamiliar in of itself.

But it's nice. Nicer that Snake doesn't swat him away, either. A smidge impishly, making it no secret that he knows exactly what he's doing, does he peck his skin.

Then comes a very, very faint suckle. 

“Not really that difficult.” He has to admit he's thankful he's caught Raiden off guard, if only from the fact Snake’s a bit shy – in the shadows, there isn’t much to see. Up close? Too much. He plays the runaround with Raiden’s gaze: some sort of endless loop where he’ll meet your eyes halfway but never let you cross the bridge that lets you peer into that deep, viridian green and entrench yourself in the thick of the forest. Before you can, it becomes a glance and nothing more. It's more attention that he usually lets people pay him and closer than he usually lets them.

But Raiden's different in more ways than one; a humanity radiates from him even as he sits bare and coquettish next to a man who’d once been something of a superior to him. So he’s still, lets him have free roam over his body as if it were the ocean. “Got you mewling, right? And you're not even an animal.”

Lightly, their knees brush. It’s stupid, he thinks, but it gets the point across: _you’re still human, aren’t you?_ Gets him a roll of the eyes from Raiden’s end at least.

“Sounds like you’re thinking about it more than I am.” It’s said in jest, but his eyes rove up towards him — they revel in the sight of his face, the way its hard and rough lines lighten and relax. There was still that man in him, the confident and young and untouchable veteran who managed to wear you down with that rugged and quiet charm of his until you gave into him entirely. The man who gave you no choice but to put some stock in every single word he said. For a second, the corners of Raiden’s lips threaten to twist upwards. 

Well, it was a pretty picture, that much Snake could confess. He's a sucker for blondes if you ask him.

A moment passes.

“...I liked it.” Snake admits. Listen to it closely, with the trained ears of a hunter, and you’ll hear the vulnerability in the lilt to his voice — a warm kind of nostalgia lacing it. “Gives you something to do out there. Dogs are good company.” They're always happy to see you, don't judge, and give love freely. Was that what he wanted? To know he was loved for himself for an indispensable fraction of time? Sometimes— Sometimes people are just a little too complicated for Solid Snake— for _David_. And sometimes, in turn, he was too simple for them. “And that's _Mr._ Snow White to you, rookie.”

In place of a laugh or an answer, Raiden’s fingers dance along his torso, hand gliding up towards his chest. Then comes another pat before he nestles a centimeter closer. Snake doesn’t turn to look at him, opting to silently grant Raiden access to the expanse of skin he's after; he allows him a few yards, and that alone is enough. Wordlessly, Snake watches as the light outside fades from black to navy. The sun won't be up for a while…but it's a slow riser, anyway.

“Dogs give back what they get.” Raiden’s voice is as soft as the dim light of the sunrise. He’s careful to not encroach on his boundaries but bold enough to briefly administer another series of kisses, this time down his jawline. _So if they loved you, it was for a reason. Can I love you? Will you let me love you?_

“Have you considered getting any pets again?” is the question he asks instead.

It gives Snake pause, marked in how he looks away and furrows his brow. A thoughtful hum thrums in his throat, and he takes a hit off the cigarette. Raiden reads him well, unfortunately: Love's what he sought, family and familiarity, and it's what he got back from the little furballs. He grunts, the realization that he isn't as distant as he thought washing over him with a hot, sinking feeling of bashfulness. So, would he get any pets again? 

“Maybe fifty cats, this time.”

A hand reaches out and ruffles Raiden's ash blond hair with all the fondness of an old friend. It's partly to erase his tracks, partly to return the affection. “Looks like I've got a penchant for them.”

Raiden’s eyes stare intently, unmoving before they soften. He treasures it: those moments of vulnerability, plain as daylight, where David would manifest in Snake’s place. Jack was an ugly little thing: cruel, vicious, twisted and terribly lost. But David? David was beautiful. He was warm and forgiving, a man trying desperately hard to keep loving and be loved in a world that had brandished that as an impossibility.

Jack wants to protect David — wants to protect that heart. Outside of Sunny, it’s the one good thing he’s capable of, he thinks.

That’s why it’s Jack that leans into his touch next. He lets his hips bracket David’s, torso sliding against his. A heavy set of shoulders pushes forward and the swell of Jack’s lips is brushing along David’s, teasing with intent.

“I’m not much of an animal person,” he admits in a low breath. The smoke is heady and heavy in his face. “But I know that cats stick with their owners until the end. Protective, too. They were descended from predators, after all.”

A shockwave of surprise and excitement ripples through Snake – it’s not everyday that he’s thrown off balance, but Raiden has always managed in his own ways. Chest to chest, the two of them sit for a moment as Snake drinks in the feeling of Raiden's body and the closeness of his voice, deep like rolling thunder. There's a spike of heat that hits him from the base of his spine and it trails up to the very top of his head where Snake shifts his hips just enough to be annoying.

And he smokes, as if he didn't just do that, and takes another hit off his cigarette before snuffing it up in the kicked up ashtray. Those sheets are ruined.

Instead of inhaling the smoke, he snakes a hand around Raiden's shoulder to pull him closer so that it's not a brush against the lips anymore. They share the smoke and nicotine, their lungs caught by the same disease for a moment. Silvery billows of smoke slip from them when Snake pulls away, metal and ash on his tongue. 

“Predator, huh...?”

He looks like he’s on the cusp of a laugh.

“Looks like you're the one being hunted, Jack.” He huffs out confidently – airily too, similar to a horse. “I don't think I'll need any pets. Got my hands full with you already.”

Electricity courses through Jack, the scent of steel and smoke overwhelming him for a moment: he laps it up, breathing it in smoothly — eagerly, even. Something akin to adrenaline slices him into strips, corroding iron, sparking lightning in his eyes. Jack’s hands grip David by the sides of his face. His touch isn’t harsh, but it is unrelenting. Fingers spread apart to get a proper feel for his features while he imprints the details onto the sleek metal of his palms. 

“...You talk big for someone who can’t track for shit, David.”

And then he crushes their lips together, searching for everything — and anything. His hips buck down in a sharp motion, groin smearing against David’s with the intent to ensnare. He isn’t playing nice, but you could call this a labor of love. 

“I’ve got the tactical advantage here. Admit it, won’t you?”

There's a loneliness in his movements, Snake notes, something starved and feral: a lost pet. He is no fool to the ways of human life — he loves living and all the complicated twists people throw at him. It’s why he takes what Raiden offers: a gut-wrenching sense of desolation and heartache, as though finding purpose in a kiss is going to heal and mend wounds older than Raiden's memory. He tastes Jack in his kiss.

When they separate it feels like taking cover from a storm, temporary safety and silence.

“There's a lot about me that's big. My personality, for example.” He speaks with deep breaths, catching himself before a fall. “Guess you really listened to what I said on Big Shell. About being rough, but not without love.”

The statement’s promptly followed by a commanding tug on Raiden's hair, tilting his head back so Snake can see the exposed cyborg skin on his jaw and neck. He pauses, then places his other hand to Raiden's cheek and lets it drift down to his neck. He doesn’t dare place a kiss there— he would, if he thought himself more than Solid Snake. But that tug earns him a sharp intake of breath, one that borders on the beginnings of a moan — Raiden realizes and flusters quickly, jaw setting into a pout before he warms underneath his touch no less. _Is it real?_ he wants to ask. Desperate to chase the feeling, the human biology behind craving and being craved, Raiden pulls away from his grasp and arches his back so that he's straddling him.

The word "love" makes him turn away. Had you not known any better you would think his eyes shone with shame for a split second. But then he's back, leaning down, lining kisses down Snake's chest with reverie. Like he's performing prayer. 

“Not as big as you think.” He jokes with a quirk of the brow as his eyes flickers up, just for a moment. One of his hands settles against his torso as his kisses span down his ribcage, and he gives a roll of his hips all the while. 

“David.” His voice is low — and Jack's eyes meet his, sharp but full, a knife eager to plunge into a body. Pry it open, crawl inside, hold a bare heart in your hands. “Look at me.”

Snake permits this. That, on its own, the act of submission and allowance, speaks volumes from Snake. Raiden peppers his body with kisses and he thinks that the famished way he does so means that if he could, he'd take Snake's heart out for himself to keep. Not necessarily as an act of possession, he thinks. It's more of a hole that needs to be filled, a chasm where Jack has decided he's inhuman and lacking.

So yes, he looks, locks his green gaze with Raiden's— with Jack's, and watches for a moment before pressing both hands to his cheeks. Nothing more than smooth, synthetic skin beneath calloused fingers that have been whittled down to muscle and bone.

“I'm looking. I see you.”

He speaks deliberately, the choice of words and the sound of syllables an act of worship in his own way. Snake loves life and the people he loves. Seeing them living and breathing is wonderful. A simple, beautiful gift. There's a moment where Snake— where David holds Jack's head of his grip, keeps him anchored there for a moment and searches his eyes for an inkling of his mood and stability before nodding. 

“I just see a man, Jack.”

David shakes his head and kisses Jack once, the way you kiss someone you care about when they come home to you. Jack? Jack is still — frozen in place, wholly suspended in time at Snake's will. He is seen, he is material. Wires and bolts melt into flesh and bone, and he can feel his own heartbeat accompanied by an all-too real rush of blood.

Idly, his jaw moves. His chest is heavy. Heavier than the rest of his body. The words are caught in his throat — too many of them to count or verbalize. Jack wants to reach forward, carve out a space in David's body to hide in until morning. Today and the day after and the next. In the darkness, his eyes sting.

He melts into this kiss as though it were his lifeline. Breathes in the scent of smoke and old leather before throwing his arms around David's shoulders. Those arms loop around him like a noose, and Jack can feel teeth crashing against teeth, but he doesn't care. Selfishly, he doesn't care. Instead his tongue plunges into David's mouth hungrily, wanting to consume whatever it can. 

Jack exhales and pushes his ass back, forcefully but just enough that it's teasing the head of David's cock. Then two thighs clasp together, nestling the length right in between their weight. 

“Fuck me, David.” It's grit out but breathy with emotional exhaustion and high with sentiment. “I want you.”

Once, David recalls that he’d seen a stray cat, all bones and sagging fur, roving the streets in search of food. It had these ravenous, beady eyes, looking towards him as if sizing up the distance between Snake and itself, most likely contemplating if biting him would be worth the risk. Snake hadn't bothered with even the thought of leaving the cat be. The decision to feed it tuna was one that came naturally. It came around for more canned tuna every day following, and when it stopped, he imagined it had found a family to take care of it.

Raiden feeds him desperation as if it were as decadent as a bowl of milk to a kitten. He isn’t the hungry tomcat here, he thinks, but he takes what he’s given. Snake holds him tight like it’ll keep him weighed there for as long as he'd like, because Raiden has a habit of floating beyond the material world’s reach. Perhaps there’ll be a bruise over his mouth, a black-purple impression of Snake's kiss on him and that too will anchor him to the world that Snake loves, that he thinks Raiden could love alongside him. 

He won't let Raiden devour him or live inside him but Snake will let him take what he needs and what he wants and if that is enough for him to live, it is good. So much of Snake's life has been trying to seek out what is good enough: what use is life if not to be good? If not to cultivate life itself and watch a sapling of a person grow? Love is the only thing that’s come freely to him. It’s the only thing that has managed to supersede his design; there is no rhyme or reason or purpose to it. It simply is. He loves because he chooses to – because he wants to. He sees a stray, a wounded animal, a beast to some, sees his eyes reflected in the light that plays against its irises and loves it because he can.

Raiden practically pleads to Snake's ears, and he gives.

Unceremonious, he has Raiden on his back, shoulders pinned to the mattress. In contrast to Raiden's hungry ministrations, Snake is confident, fluid in his movements. Maybe Raiden’ll start the kiss by making it all teeth and tongue quickly, but Snake takes a steady and assertive approach, working his tongue against his. It feels organic and just as authentic and tangible as the rest of him, which he knows intimately. Snake’s hips work against Raiden's in a roll. It washes over him in waves, the pressure enough to make his back begin to arch. Skin to synthetic skin, muscle grinding against muscle, their cocks move together in an easy rhythm and admittedly Snake's already stiff. Not like he needed much help in that department.

With someone else, Raiden would be more uppity. More bared teeth and snarls, shoulders that tense and tighten at the slightest touch: all the telltale signs of a need to control. But he gives into Snake. As though it were the easiest thing in the world, he falls flat against the mattress, watching humanity's greatest relic in all of its prowess and bravado climb over him. The kiss is languid and sweet, sweeter than it has any right to be — something straight out of a movie. His tongue flicks back against Snake's, a groan escaping him before his heels move up to press against the small of his back.

It's embarrassing, really, how far, far away he is right now. Not lost to the world, just in the clouds, weightless for a fleeting moment. What is this, he wonders. He loved Rosemary. Wanted her to love him back, wholeheartedly and for what he was. But there was only so much he could give her before pulling his hand away and curling it around a bottle, a pack of cigarettes, the handle of a knife, anything. Yet Snake — _David_ is different. He'll give and give and give until there's nothing left. David is a gentle thing, so he wouldn't cannibalize him. But Jack would let him peck at his rotting flesh like a mildly interested vulture, until he's finally faded without a whimper or a bang.

He's never believed in god, truthfully. Religion is just a means of control, after all. But he understands it a little when he's underneath him. Whatever Solid Snake was — it was enough to make him believe in faith, sacrifice, self immolation. It was a plane higher than love. It was need and fantasy and something terribly twisted but purer than anything he's ever known.

It was real.

Snake breaks the wet kiss to lean over Raiden. His eyes are a little blue, almost as if the light is slowly becoming. 

“You don’t beg. You whine.” He says suddenly, a curl to his lips. It's not quite a smile. “Always have.”

Snake's hand sneaks beneath him, grabbing hold of Raiden's ass with a tight grip, testing to see his reaction. “Want to give me a little more?”

He could laugh at that, right in his face, if he’d caught his breath by now. Raiden fails to suppress the gasp that very clumsily parts from him — instinctively, his hips rock downwards, and then back up as he's caught between the way David gropes his ass and grinds against him. So his legs hook around him, and he ushers him closer with the pull of his thighs before his arms furl out behind him, spilling across the sheets. And then he stretches upwards, as if to make a show of himself. Jack's eyes flutter shut delicately; this time a breathy moan gets trapped in his throat and only barely tumbles out.

His grip on David tightens, and with a click of his jaw, his teeth come down against his bottom lip. It's a wanton sight edged with a mocking kind of humor. 

“Fuck me, please....” His voice pitches up an octave, like he's one of those women from the homebrewed pornos he knows David watches and unabashedly loves. The corners of his lips quirk up into a smirk. “Your cock is just as big as the legends said they were.” He vigorously thrusts up against him, feeling their bodies move in sync with one another as wildfire overtakes the chill of his skin. The sound of a machine whirring hums in his ears. 

“Oh, David...I need you so bad. I'd give you anything you wanted...” It's a stage moan, sure, but there's some truth to it. Who said you couldn't make fun of a man while getting him off? So Jack swallows, carries his pitch to another octave, and through hooded eyes— “You'll let me, won't you...

Daddy?”

When you aim, you're supposed to go for the kill, you know. 

Snake has been quiet as he’s taken in the sound of Raiden playing to him, making a grand show of himself. His body is mechanical and working up a heat— there's always something akin to heat within Raiden, but as the gears stir to keep up with every rock of Snake's hips, a spark ignites in the pit of Snake’s belly. It slinks down his spine and makes his back arch, pushing their bodies close enough again, and he can feel the crushing pressure of Raiden's cyborg anatomy against him. Snake stays there for a moment, pressing his mouth to Raiden's in a much more chaste kiss, softer and brisker than the last. Hips still going, he's aware of how their cocks slide against one another, a teasing and not at all fulfilling friction between them.

And then he moves back, hands behind him on the bed, expression set in something just barely displeased. 

“Nah.” He says despite the way his dick stands and twitches, begging for attention. “I don't think I like that.” A lie, a blatant lie, but there's something just a touch amused and proud in Snake's features. It’s the act of playing with your prey before you swallow it whole. Raiden's no mouse, but he's certainly stuck. “Do it like yourself. Like you mean it.”

_Asshole._

If Raiden cared for him less, he’d get up right now. Tell him to take it or leave it — that was the caged animal he was. He doesn’t, of course. Instead he breathes in, feeling the flush overtake him, heat sweeping across him in waves. His vision is swimming as if his body is attempting to keep up with the human overload that is intense, maddening arousal. His cock is agonizingly rigid, and he feels the artificial muscle fashioned to fight clench and constrict from the way Snake looks at him. There’s want in those eyes, so certain in what it is, but somehow the warmth in them is almost virginal.

Raiden’s hips have risen off the bed, still bucking into the night air once Snake has put some distance between them. His lips immediately clasp shut, flattening — a stark contrast to the series of gasps and grunts Snake had pried from him a minute ago. The arrogance to his disposition and demand make him simmer; he expects so much from him, commands it even, and knows well that he’ll get it.

In response, Jack wordlessly wedges his legs open. They part slowly, and his fingers trail down his abdomen to his ass. The great thing about synthetic muscle is how malleable it is; it isn’t taut or stiff by nature the way human muscle was, giving him an unnatural kind of flexibility.

It also helps in situations like these, where he can crook two fingers into his entrance with next to no problem at all. 

“You’re such a bastard.” Jack drawls, this time in a much lower, more natural voice. His voice. Their gazes intertwine in a heated battle. It’d always come back to that. “Please, David.” He pumps his fingers, the stretch burning as though he were still forged from flesh — he savors that pinprick of pain. Pursues it, even. “You don’t know how much I need you. How often I do this to myself and think of you...”

It’s more honest than he intends for it to be. But his legs are already open, and his back is arching against the mattress shamelessly anyways, the same name echoing from his lips over and over again. He pushes past the embarrassment of it all— 

“Please, daddy.”

Pressing forward, he lets go for the moment. Jack wants David and so David leans into a kiss, tasting steel and saliva and the remnants of smoke. Jack's legs, already open, are against David's shoulders, his hands trailing down his pectorals, his abdomen, his thighs and calves with a silent appreciation. Jack has more power in his body than David might ever know. It doesn't faze him. His lower jaw is gone, removed to make way for machinery and cogs and gears and he has no idea what else but he still tastes good to Snake— the impression of him both human and inorganic, like something interpreted by another person and told to him in a story. It's good enough, it's Jack enough. He kisses Jack again and again and again, levering his leg up and first placing a finger inside him just to find where he should go.

It isn't the raucous display that does it for Snake. Admittedly, it helps. An attractive person fucking themselves in front of you is hardly an unwelcome sight in the bedroom, and Raiden does it with such a relaxed, welcoming manner that there is no one, in his opinion, that wouldn't be tempted. Still, it's not the sexual aspect that grips him by the heart and draws him back in. It's the honesty laced in Jack’s voice, whiskey smooth and enticing for what it is.

Jack is right. David— Snake— is a bastard. He's guarded and difficult, incapable of complete honesty and he communicates in ciphers so that most people can't tolerate him for long. It's true, in his book; people don't want David, they want Solid Snake. The man behind the legend, the guy who does it all, is a detriment to the name, as far as he's concerned. He'll never live up to the idea of himself, the one that was bred and born to be a proficient lapdog and a killer with a seamless track record. Maybe that’s why he’d been so hard of a man: life finds a way, even if your heart wasn't supposed to navigate the world.

But it isn't Solid Snake that coaxes that honesty out of Jack, that tone of voice that goes right to his soul and leaves an all too human impression. It's David he wants and so it's David he gets. When he pulls away from the kiss, lingering for a moment, he hovers over Jack. There is a heart in that shell crafted by the Patriots, and there's a world’s worth of truths in that heart that he’ll relish for this moment.

Solid Snake can’t reanimate him, bring him back from the dead. But David, against the odds, will try.

“I'm right here,” he says, once, and firmly. A fact and a command. Stay right here, too, then, if this is really what you want. In a flash, not unlike a strike of lightning, Jack exposes that little bit of the humanity in him, too.

With a grunt, he presses inside him. Not the most standard experience, but it feels about as good as a toy would. The way Jack gives into him feels right, though David imagines that if he wanted to, he could go as hard and fast as he wanted. He would, too, under the right circumstance, but not now. Jack's a man, the machine body aside, and he wants to treat him as such. So it's a slow rock at first, thrusting in and out with a relaxed rhythm. 

“Still a bastard?”

If David won’t make it easy, Jack sure as hell won’t either. It’s always been a push and pull between them; from the moment they met on Big Shell and Lieutenant J.G. Pliskin slid that cartridge to him, and Raiden for some god forsaken reason felt compelled to catch it at the perfect moment, shoot and fire for the sake of a stranger to bursting through the iron clad doors of Shadow Moses and stubbornly guarding David’s life with a blade wedged between his teeth.

When Jack lets his ankles dig into the small of David’s back, thighs trapping him in a vise while his hips lift abruptly, he is responding in kind. Fervently, his fingers run through the worn, silver strands of David’s hair. They breathe raggedly, a mess of flesh and machinery, both rusting as they wrap around one another.

Jack buries his face in the crook of David’s neck and rakes his teeth along his aged skin before sinking them into him harshly – protectively. It earns him a groan as David bottoms out inside of him, burying himself to the hilt until Jack is impossibly warm and tight around him.

The air’s caught in his lungs, and Jack barely chokes out a cry before yanking David down by the back of his head and scrambling to kiss him hard; he nearly swallows him whole, until neither of them can breathe, drowning together and in each other. Jack feels himself being rended apart – in between short pants is a shallow groan that gets muffled in David’s shoulder. 

“Sn—” Jack starts. David grasps at the sides of his waist harshly enough to bruise, still pounding into him. “David,” Jack corrects himself. His voice is guttural, low and dangerous as he rasps. It’s hardening and cracking into something else — something more feral. David’s shoulders are powerful and capable, even in their old age, and he feels himself coming back down to Earth in his high. Nails dig into them, biting, before Jack flips them over in a single motion.

Seating himself on David’s hips with gritted teeth, Jack’s lips part and furl slightly into a knowing, manic smile; David’s brows knit when he realizes he could come to the sight of his alone.

He doesn’t have to, because Jack’s hands feel for his broad chest, thumbing his nipples before ramming down against his cock and anchoring him onto the bed with the force of his palms. “David,” The name escapes him again. “Don’t,” His pace quickens. He can hardly see.

“Stay here. Stay,” Through lowered eyelashes, Jack looks at him with all of the weariness, all of the heartbreak of a man who has splintered time and tint again. The greys of his eyes water with need — David’s trembling hand twists up, traversing his jawline, coming to a standstill once its back lightly brushes against his cheek. “Don’t go.”

In the silence, David seizes up and comes hard, his mind drifting like smoke. Jack’s fingers carefully wrap around his wrist. He keeps him there, tethered to his cheek, and continues to ride him as David fills him to the brim. The bed creaks violently beneath them. Jack didn’t have a body built for any kind for release.

Right now, he doesn’t care.

Wholeness and humanity. He wonders if there’s any difference.

In the dim afterglow, the sun begins to paint the sky a soft purple, the same that had always indicated safety in Jack’s mind. It meant that he’d lived to another day.

He notices it, vaguely, as he cradles David’s head in his strong arms. They lay there naked beneath the sheets. There’s nothing to be said, nothing to be done.

“David.” Jack whispers. There is no response, but David does smear his nose against his chest. It was a nice chest. Makes him think of a sculpture you’d see on display.

“We’re safe.”

He doesn’t elaborate. He knows he won’t be asked to. Through the window, the warm light drenches the two of them. For the first time, in a long time, Jack lets himself watch the sun rise.


End file.
